Darkness (2009)

AKA T.M.A.

The passing of Juraj Herz in April 2018 was a massive blow to not just fans of eccentric cinema but for world cinema as a whole. Herz was an interesting character from the very beginning of his directorial career. While he could technically be considered part of the Czech New Wave, there were things about his films that set him apart from his Czech counterparts. Early on Herz showed an adeptness for fantastic genre material in the form of The Cremator (1969), a classic horror and black comedy hybrid that highlighted Herz's highly stylized and surreal visual sensibilities. Herz further honed his horror craft with Morgiana (1972) and would later take another somewhat cheeky turn with Ferat Vampire (1982) about a vampyric car that runs on human blood. Like a lot of his fellow Czech directors, Herz also had a particular skill when it came to fairy tales, his take on Beauty and the Beast (1978) standing out as one of the most original takes on the classic tale with its humanoid bird/man hybrid beast. Other films like The Ninth Heart (1979) and The Frog Prince (1991) also showcased Herz's skills at fairy tale storytelling. Herz would make a return to horror one final time later in his career in 2009 with Darkness, a film that, despite its rather anonymously bland title, breathes new life into a classic, tried and true horror film scenario.

Needing some time away from his hard partying ways, Marek, a successful musician, travels back to his childhood home for some rest and relaxation. Almost immediately after arriving however Marek is greeted with hostility from the locals who warn him that the house should have remained vacant. Not long after settling in, Marek begins to feel the presence of others in the house and begins having fragmented flashbacks to his childhood to an incident involving his sister Tereza, who's long been institutionalized. With the otherworldly presences becoming stronger, Marek begins to feel he's losing his mind and seeks the help of a local historian, uncovering the tragic history of his house involving the Nazi's in WWII, all the while Tereza is planning a trip back home.

Both a literal and metaphorical ghost story, Darkness is very much a film about the ghosts of the past rearing their ugly head in the present. The set-up is a classic horror scenario. The old, dark house with a troubled past, unwelcoming locals looking upon the newcomer in town with suspicion and disdain, skeletons in the family closet, all given a fresh spin by Herz. While the film is a literal ghost story in that Marek's house is truly being occupied by specters from beyond, the film's more metaphorical ghosts are represented via Marek's family history, with Tereza becoming an increasingly more important character as the film progresses, the fractured flashbacks giving the impression at times that Marek might possibly be going insane, adding to the already heightened sense of paranoia permeating the film. The ghosts of history also play a major role with the WWII backstory giving the film some pretty heavy emotional weight, the backstories of some of the side characters factoring in as well making things more intriguing. The film differs quite a bit stylistically from Herz's past horrors in favor of a more dreary look and tone which, given the material is understandable and eerily effective, with a sense of mounting dread being sustained for the majority of the film. The well-worn trope of the unfriendly locals feels even slightly more sinister and harsh, and Herz even spices the film up with some jolting bits of gore with have an Italian feel some moments of fierce, nearly X-rated sexuality.

All the WWII elements in the film were added by Herz with screenwriter Martin Nemec calling his original script more “intimate”. The war was a constant reoccurring theme for Herz, himself a Holocaust survivor, most famously fused with horror in The Cremator but also in films such as The Night Overtakes Me (1986) and Habermann (2010). During a behind the scenes look at Darkness, Herz explains his attraction to genre came about from reading fairly tales as a child and his later discovering of Edger Allan Poe, the suspense he felt while reading giving him the urge to create the same type of suspense for people watching his films. Herz would describe himself as a “devout atheist” who, despite loving making films about the supernatural, doesn't believe in it himself. Interesting then that there was an occultist on set who claimed to be in communication with a ghost. Nemec was quick to believe the set was indeed haunted with his laptop disappearing into thin air and the boom operators mic not picking up sound when it would normally pick out sounds from miles away. Darkness certainly sicks out from Herz's other works in the genre due to its modernity but with Herz at the helm all the shortcomings associated with such a term are sidestepped with Herz delivering a fine example of contemporary horror worthy of standing along side his previous genre classics. 

Spider (2002)

One of the most common descriptors used when discussing the work of David Cronenberg is “cold” or “detached” as it relates to his approach to his material and certainly his characters. While this is true to a certain extent as Cronenberg's films do tend to have a very clinical aesthetic, and his handling of characters could be described as psychoanalytical and fairly objective, with Cronenberg making little to no judgments of his characters, his films are hardly emotionless. For instance the divorce at the center of The Brood (1979) is sure to hit close to home for many as are the family dynamics explored in A History of Violence (2005) and even Maps to the Stars (2014) is an oddly touching film once the final scene ends. The Fly (1986) is well regarded for being a tragic love story at heart and the downfall of the twins in Dead Ringers (1988) is incredibly heartbreaking. Crash (1996), often regarded as Cronenberg's coldest, is, much like The Fly, ultimately revealed to be a love story. While his work was always psychologically complex, around the turn of the new millennium Cronenberg's films started to become even more more psychologically focused and it was Spider in 2002, another film that, clinical on the surface, slowly reveals itself to have a strong emotional core, the prime emotion being melancholy, seemed to usher in a new era for Cronenberg.

After being released from a mental institution, Dennis Cleg (Ralph Fiennes), known as “Spider”, is sent to live in a halfway house. Once there, Spider begins exploring the surrounding neighborhood where he grew up and begins to relive memories of his childhood involving his parents (Miranda Richardson and Gabriel Byrne), gradually putting the pieces of the puzzle that led to his current situation back together.

Even by Cronenberg standards, Spider plays some masterful tricks on the brain. Part of its genius lies in the way the film is structured. It begins simple enough, and the many transitions from past to present are easily discernible, yet Cronenberg slyly complicates matters in the most subtle of ways leading to more and more questions as the film progresses. Although the film isn't a first person narrative, it feels as such and therefore presents everything the way Spider sees it, which in itself poses a lot of questions as it relates to the reliability of his narration given his disposition. Very few films are able to get into a character's mindset with the ease of Spider which is what gives the film a powerful emotional edge. The world Spider inhabits in both his mind and physical surroundings is a sad and lonely place, represented by the films production design and washed out, almost sickly green color scheme. Even the slightly more colorful moments of fantasy taking place in a sunny pasture have a tinge of despair to them. The feeling of gloom and despondency is felt right from the opening credits until the end and eventually does begin to weigh heavy and lingers long after the film has ended. Of course the film rests almost entirely on Fiennes' shoulders who, despite never uttering one single word, only gibberish, brilliantly conveys Spider's tangled through process and Richardson's tackling of not one but three roles plays a major part in the films mental trickery.

Although Spider does suffer from a specific psychological disorder, Cronenberg wisely chose not to name it and even went so far as to remove moments in the script that would have called for effects, stating in an interview “I took the special effects sequences out of the script, because I think those effects... are recognizable to an audience as effects, as hallucinations that can’t possibly be real. And the unspoken purpose of the movie was to make the audience be “Spider.” So when he’s hallucinating and thinking something is real, we must also feel that.” Cronenberg also explained that despite the films focus on psychology, his main interest is still the body stating “Oh, there’s only a fleshy element. I am healing the Cartesian rift. I am an embodied person. I really understand the connection between body and mind... When you’re studying the human mind, you can’t take the mind out of it; you have to put it back into the brain. For me, it’s all body.” Spider is also a film that, if it wasn't already apparent from his entire filmography, Cronenberg, along with Fiennes and Richardson, are all in their chosen professions for the right reasons, with the films low budget forcing all three to defer their salaries and its obvious the amount of care that went into Spider, a film with the same amount of heart as brains behind it.

The Fall of the Louse of Usher (2002)

Much like the advent of VHS and the affordability of the home video camera in the 80's made it possible for virtually anybody to make a movie, the digital revolution and the increased availability of camcorders that came along in the late 90's and early 2000's led to even more opportunities for people to realize their filmmaking ambitions. Just as the 80's saw a glut of shot-on-video productions, the new millennium led to an innumerable amount of digitally lensed features, a fair amount by amateurs, but what digital cameras also offered was the chance for already established directors to work with total creative control away from studio interference as well as smaller crews. Jess Franco would be a prime example of a veteran director who dove head first into the digital sea, shooting a plethora of highly personal, experimental features on digital video. David Lynch was also a vocal proponent of shooting digitally, his epic Inland Empire (2006) being shot on a consumer grade Sony PD-150 camera. Ken Russell was yet another director to embrace the freedom digital video offered with Russell's later works consisting of several homemade digital shorts but the film that would become his final feature, 2002's The Fall of the Louse of Usher, has the distinction of not only being the crown jewel of his digital works but also one of the most outlandish titles in Russell's entire oeuvre.

After being convicted of murdering his wife Annabel Lee, rock star Roderick Usher is committed to an insane asylum under the watchful eye of Dr. Calahari (played by Russell himself). Almost immediately, Usher soon discovers that Calahari, along with his eccentric nurse ABC Smith, are just as if not more insane than their patients as he struggles to uncover the truth about his wife's death while being subjugated to Calahari's bizarre forms of treatment turning his already confused mind into a nonstop surreal waking nightmare.

Subtitled "A Gothic Tale for the 21^st Century", The Fall of the Louse of Usher is Russell completely unfiltered. Not that he ever let any producer hold him back, but even by Russell standards, Louse is a relentless barrage of lunacy from beginning to end. Stuck somewhere between a home movie and a music video, with the film fully becoming the later in parts, Russell's biggest influence as the title suggests is Edgar Allan Poe but not just The Fall of the House of Usher and Annabel Lee, as Russell mentions Poe by name throughout the film, even using plot points from Murders in the Rue Morgue to suggest possible clues to the mystery surrounding Usher's wife's death. That's of course if anyone isn't utterly lost by the time the film gets to the Rue Morgue references as the plot often takes a backseat to Russell's over-the-top visuals, all done on the most shoestring of budgets, including everything from a mummy, a gorilla, an orgy featuring blow-up dolls and an inflatable dinosaur and even a massive inflatable castle. While most humorless types will be quick to dismiss the film solely on its look, the film is actually rather interesting in that its almost as if Russell an co. were relishing in the artifice, purposefully making every aspect of the film look as cheap as possible and yet there is an ingenuity to all the homemade effects and costumes, the punk rock, DIY spirit of the production making the film all the more endearing.

The film was very much a labor of love from Russell and his wife Lisi Tribble, with Russell not only writing, directing and starring in the film (and hamming it up marvelously complete with a hilariously exaggerated German accent) but also acting as the cinematographer, producer and editor while Tribble pulled quadruple duties in the acting department playing four different roles. The film was again the product of a time of immense creativity for Russell who would follow it with several shorts, including a segment in the horror anthology films Trapped Ashes (2006) titled “The Girl With the Golden Breasts” as well as a hysterically incendiary Christmas themed internet short A Kitten for Hitler (2007). Prior to Louse, Russell had been working pretty much exclusively in television after his final theatrical feature Whore (1991) was unceremoniously slapped with an NC-17 rating, resulting in a limited release. It's perhaps safe to assume that The Fall of the Louse of Usher was the type of movie Russell was clamoring to make during his made-for-TV years, the advent of digital video finally giving him the resources. It's the product of legend effectively telling the filmmaking establishment he didn't need them anymore. Although some may run away in horror at the rough aesthetics of it, The Fall of the Louse of Usher is without question 100% pure Ken Russell and that in itself is something to admire.